MARY.

But what?

SOPHY.

Whatever your eyes light upon.  If I cough, you read from the Bible. 
First the letter.

MARY (reads).

“Dear Mary.  I have so much to—­

SOPHY.

He is getting up again from his chair.  Read from the Bible till he is at the window.

MARY.

“Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth:  as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.”

[FORESTER drums on the window.]

SOPHY (constantly watching him).

Now the letter, Mary.  Till I cough.

MARY.

“I have so much to tell you.  Sometime during the evening or the night come to the Dell by the spring under the willows.  There I shall wait for you.  Come, Mary.  Tomorrow morning I am going out into the world to win happiness for you and for me.  If you do not come, I know what you mean, and you will never see me again.”

SOPHY.

He intends to go?  Out into the world?  Forever, if you do not go?  Then everything would be lost!

MARY.

“You will never again see your Robert.”

SOPHY (coughs, just as the FORESTER is turning away from the window).

From the Bible, Mary.

MARY.

“As he hath caused a blemish in a man, so it shall be done to him again.  Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for one of your own country:  for I am the Lord, your God.”

FORESTER (has become attentive; stops).

What is that there about law?

MARY.

“Ye shall have one manner of law—­”

FORESTER.

“Ye shall have one manner”—­Where is that?

MARY.

Here, father.  Up there at the left.

FORESTER.

Put a mark there where that begins, what you have read there about the law.  Do you see now that I am right?  Even if I have to put up with injustice?  That my old heart here is no liar?  “Ye shall have one manner of law”—­not a special one for officials of the State.  At that time the Law was still sound; then it did not live in dusty, moldy offices.  It was administered under the gates in the open air, as we read there.  If I had my way, the courts ought to have sessions in the forest; in the forest man’s heart remains sound; there one knows what is right and what is wrong without Ifs and Buts.  With their secret tricks they have put a string of Ifs and Buts to it; in their dusty, moldy offices it has become sick and blunt and withered, so that they can turn and twist it as they like.  And now what is right must be put in writing and have a seal to it, otherwise it is not to be recognized as right.  Now they have deprived a man’s word of all value and degraded it, since one is only bound by what one has sworn to, what one has under seal and in writing.  Out of the good old right they have made a turn-coat, so that an old man, whose honor was never sullied by the slightest blemish, must stand as a rascal before men—­because they in their offices have two rights instead of one.